It had to hurt Ben Howland that Kansas coach Bill Self won his first NCAA title Monday night.
If the rumors floating around were true, Self was coaching for his job eight days earlier in the Elite Eight against Davidson. If Kansas hadn’t have won, he was going to be fired. Instead, Davidson missed a last-second three pointer and Self went on to get as much job security as he wants.
UCLA’s Howland, who has never been one shot away from having to find a new job, is beginning to build a reputation as a big-time coach who can’t win the big-time games.
Now that Self has joined Tom Izzo, Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams and Billy Donovan as first-time winners this decade, Memphis’ John Calipari and Howland remain atop the short list of best titleless coaches.
In fact, all Howland, who has led UCLA to three straight Final Fours, needs is one more spectacular FInal Four failure to become the Marv Levy of college basketball. Levy, the coach of the Buffalo Bills when they lost four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s, might hold the record for most success without a championship, but Howland is adding to his resume each year.
Starting with his first head coaching job at Northern Arizona, Howland has had success everywhere he’s been. He led the Lumberjacks out of the Big Sky Conference basement to an NCAA Tournament in 1998 before moving on to Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh, he did the same thing, winning a combined 57 games in leading the Panthers to two Sweet 16s in his last two seasons there. He was named national coach of the year in 2002.
His success at UCLA has been even more well documented – three straight Pacific-10 Conference regular season championships, three straight Final Fours… and zero banners to hang from the Pauley Pavilion rafters.
Now, I’m not saying that he’s not a good coach. His success everywhere he goes speaks otherwise. I’m sure many Oregon fans would take Ben Howland as their coach in a heartbeat. It’s just that he can’t be considered a great coach until he wins a title.
He’s had some great teams and some great players, but hasn’t been able to put it all together. In 2006, Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo and Ryan Hollins led a surprise run to the title game, where the Bruins lost to Florida. The next year, a more seasoned team again ran into Florida in a national semifinal.
This year, however, was supposed to be the year. Even without Afflalo, who left a year early for the NBA, Darren Collison and Josh Shipp were All-Pac-10 caliber and superfrosh Kevin Love was supposed to be the missing piece that would push the Bruins over the top.
UCLA had its best regular season under Howland and, despite a few close calls (Stanford, Cal and Texas A&M fans would say they were robbed), made it back to the Final Four, ready to erase the memories of the previous two years.
Instead, Memphis ran all over the Bruins, bullying them, running around them and generally dominating the game. Collison got outplayed by Derrick Rose, Love got outmuscled by Joey Dorsey and UCLA get sent back to Los Angeles without a title yet again.
It’s far too early to say Howland can’t win the big one – Boeheim and Roy Williams both had far more close calls before finally breaking through – but he’s definitely racking up the disappointments at an impressive clip.
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